Thoughts on "Wozzeck"

My first encounter with Wozzeck was the legendary performance at the Vienna State Opera with Franz Grundheber, Hildegard Behrens and Claudio Abbado conducting.

I was allowed to assist Abbado at the time and witness the entire rehearsal process. That's when it hit me ..

Alban Berg's Wozzeck is undoubtedly a winner. Packaged in its objective brevity, it tells the story of a human creature outcast and tormented by society in an extremely dense, concise and stringent manner. As music always aims deep into the subconscious and leaves an incomparable emotional impression, Berg's score amplifies the emotional impact of Georg Büchner's already magnificent original many times over. The worldwide success of this opera is based not least on the emotionality of the music, which is late Romantic in its basic attitude - even though the composer had already overcome traditional tonality.

Alban Berg also succeeded in anchoring something deeply Austrian in the music of Wozzeck, a musical 'dialect' so to speak, which is characterized by typical Austrian dance forms such as the ländler, waltz, march and polka. For me, the emotional climax of Wozzeck is clearly the 'Hopp, hopp' at the end of the opera, in which the whole tragedy of the plot becomes tangible in the innocence of the child: a suddenly orphaned little child who has no idea how alone and unprotected he is suddenly at the mercy of the world and humanity.